1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a building system and method for constructing a multi-walled structure, configured to rapidly construct a multi-walled structure at almost any location, in a manner which achieves strong, rigid walls, having identifiable strength quotients so as to permit the construction of regulated building structures and the appropriate incorporation thereof into engineering and architectural plans. Moreover, the present building system and method is substantially economical to utilize and incorporates a plurality of reusable, easy to transport and manipulate components, while benefiting from direct concrete application techniques that can be achieve quickly and at low cost in the field.
2. Description of the Related Art
The construction of economic and/or affordable housing and/or other building structures is of paramount importance in virtually every society. Unfortunately, however, of equal importance is the endurance that all building structures are fabricated to certain minimum standards and specifications so as to provide a safe dwelling and/or other facility which can withstand multiple loads and stresses, such as from the elements, acts of nature, normal wear and tear and/or construction stresses.
Although a large number of building structures are still formed from steel and/or wood framing, with the inclusion of cinder blocks and/or molded, poured concrete elements, those traditional manufacturing techniques are often expensive, time consuming and may not be practical in a variety of circumstances and/or at a variety of locations. Indeed, it is recognized that based on the ever increasing cost of construction, many building structures are often formed in what may be considered a prefabricated and/or modular type of manner. For example, large wall slabs are often precast at an appropriate, remote location, and those precast slabs are transported to the construction site and appropriately erected, as needed, by various types of machinery. As a result, relatively strong building structures can be defined in a somewhat rapid and cost effective manner. Regrettably, however even such manufacturing techniques can often prove costly in certain circumstances, and are typically only practical when forming large facilities, wherein heavy duty framing can be installed, and more importantly wherein large heavy duty equipment can have access so as to appropriately position the preformed slabs. As a result, a large segment of the construction field, such as in remote and/or harder to reach locations and/or in connection with smaller facilities and tighter budgets, cannot truly benefit from such prefabricated building techniques.
To this end, others in the art have strived to define a variety of different, low cost and economical techniques to construct building structures. In particular, such techniques seek to deviate from traditional uses of brick and mortar, and/or concrete blocks, etc. so as to define a wall structure, and typically require large amounts of manual labor. One such technique that has been recently developed incorporates the application of concrete, such as by a pressurized spray, to a mesh, thereby defining an appropriate wall. While substantial benefits have been derived from such techniques, a large room for improvement still remains. For example, existing construction systems of this type are often difficult and/or complicated to set up, and require extensive and expensive framing materials to be positioned and define portions of the finished wall. Furthermore, such traditional techniques often rely on a flimsy mesh panels to which applied concrete may adhere, but do not truly provide a significant degree of strength and/or reinforcement to the wall structure, let alone verifiable strength and tolerances figures for one wall as compared to another wall manufactured utilizing the same technique. As a result, it would be highly beneficial to provide a building system and method which can be quickly and easily set up for the appropriate application of concrete and which provides properly defined and uniformly formed walls in an economical and minimally labor intensive manner. Moreover, it would be beneficial for such a technique to provide uniform and readily identifiable reinforcement and strength characteristics to the wall structure, thereby providing a strong and durable wall with consistent strength characteristics throughout an entire construction. Also, such a system should not be limited to a formation of straight wall segment, but should be able to achieve appropriately positioned corner elements, including interior and exterior corner elements extending in two or more different directions.